The Reckless Engineer

by Jac Wright

  She paused for a long time, greatly distressed at the memory of the events. He poured her a glass of apple juice and offered her some tissues, which she gratefully accepted.

  ‘I would not have taken a penny for myself, but my boys . . . How could I look after the boys all alone? I had no job then. I could not even pay the mortgage. My children would have been homeless and I would have lost them in a custody battle to Caitlin and Jack. It was blackmail. McAllen ripped us apart, Jeremy. Everything they are going through now is poetic justice.’

  She paused, unable to speak for the lump in her throat, her eyes full of tears.

  ‘There’s nothing in the world I would not do for my kids.’

  And McAllen would ruthlessly do anything for his. Would either of them kill?

  ‘I am sorry you had to suffer through all that, Marianne.’

  After a few minutes of silence, Marianne continued. ‘Still, none of us wanted Jack to be involved with Michelle, who was cutting him completely away from all of us. Caitlin never cut him off from the boys like Michelle did. Jack’s half of the vast McAllen-Connor estate was coming to Marc and Peter, but Michelle wanted it all to herself and her kid. We are all glad that the Michelle problem has ended.’

  Marianne suddenly sounded jealous, possessive, and angry. Could she have had something to do with the death?

  ‘To be honest Marianne, for Jack’s sake, I’m also glad that he is out of that entanglement. But he has fallen from the frying pan into the fire if he has had anything to do with that murder, or if he is paying the price for whoever did it,’ Jeremy spoke sternly.

  He didn’t really want to pretend to care that Michelle was dead. He only cared that Jack was now in deep shit for it. It was also sad that Jack’s unborn son had died.

  ‘I do think Douglas McAllen got rid of Michelle.’

  Hmm, an attempt to quickly diffuse the tension and draw the attention away from herself, Jeremy noted.

  ‘That’s the other thing I was going to see my solicitors about. I’m planning to go into the police station and give a statement about McAllen, to help Jack.’

  This was not a good idea. Michelle had taken steps to disinherit Marianne’s sons of Jack’s vast estate, and had caused the substantial funding for their education and her upkeep, from both Jack and McAllen, to be cut off. Michelle had been murdered by poisoning and Marianne was now a PhD qualified biochemist working at the University of Portsmouth, a specialist in the chemistry and the processes involved in the composition and refinement of such a poisonous compound. Both Peter and Marianne would already be in Edwards’ list of suspects, and with good reason. They had the motives, the means, and the opportunity to do it, either individually or together.

  ‘Phew, Marianne. This is a murder case and it is dead serious. You have to get advice from a good criminal solicitor before doing that. You could inadvertently do more damage than good for Jack. If you need to say anything on Jack’s behalf tell me, or I can get you to speak to Harry, and Harry will look after Jack’s best interests. I can also ask him to recommend a good family law firm if you want some advice on your divorce agreements, though I think it is premature to worry about that.’

  ‘Thanks, Jeremy, I shall accept the advice on both, please. With the McAllens one can never be too careful.’

  She walked over to the corner table with the telephone on it, took a sheet of paper from the pad, and jotted down her numbers for him.

  ‘Jack has always considered you his best friend. I don’t know how to thank you for everything you are doing for him.’

  ‘I shall speak to Harry this afternoon. I have to advise you not to initiate or accept any contact with the police before you can get advice. We need to give Peter and Marc the same advice.’

  ‘I understand. I shall also tell Peter. He’s been quite distraught since Jack withdrew from us. Peter has been the person closest to Jack all his life. I sent Peter out to meet Jack alone and speak to him just last week.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Peter told me about that. Was he able to speak to Jack?’ Jeremy probed for more information about the night.

  ‘He came back about eleven that night, all wet, and very upset that Jack had been at Michelle’s place all evening. He slept in his room here and stayed the next night also, saying he could not bear to face Dad. And the next day he brought Gillian over saying the police were at Jack’s house. Gosh, I have to tell Peter not to speak to anybody else about any of this.’

  The gravity of the information she had just spoken aloud seemed to have suddenly hit her.

  ‘Tell me what, Mum?’ Peter walked in.

  ‘To stay out of any involvement with the Michelle affair, Peter, and to speak nothing to anybody else about it.’

  ‘Okay, I shan’t, Mum. Er, the table is laid.’

  ‘You must be starving, Jeremy. Let’s have lunch.’

  Marianne served homemade meatball carbonara with penne pasta, garlic bread, and a side salad. A long time ago Jack had described to him this, her signature dish, as “a little bit of heaven in your mouth”. The meal was followed by fine Italian coffee served with Cavalier chocolates on the side.

  CHAPTER 14

  Monday, October 18 — Three Days Later

  Shaped like a segment of an arc and reminiscent of the decks of a massive luxury cruise ship, the seven-storey Marine Electronics office building was very attractive to the eye. The walls of the ground floor were transparent on all sides, through which Jeremy could see a line-up of Marine’s range of show boats, luxury yachts, and parts of large ships mounted with Marine navigation equipment.

  He entered through the rotating door at the centre of the arc and presented his ID to the reception.

  ‘Mr. Stone, long time no see.’ The security lad at the reception recognized him. ‘Mr. Walters has left a message saying he would meet you down here. I shall ring him and let him know you are here if you’d like to take a seat.’

  Jeremy had expected to be let in. He’d been gone only a little over a year. Did he really need to be escorted in? Alan kept him annoyed and waiting for ten minutes before he appeared through the elevator doors and pushed past one of the swipe-card enabled gates.

  ‘Jeremy, it’s good to see you. I’ve been having a heck of a rough day up there and I’ve had no time for a break. I’ve been away in the US for the past few months and just got back this weekend, only to find my group in utter chaos with Michelle supposedly murdered, Sally in hospital, and Jack nowhere to be found. I need to get out of here and get some fresh air and some lunch. Let’s walk over to The Mermaid. We can talk freely there and we shan’t be interrupted every few minutes. How’s Jack holding up?’

  Jeremy’s mood lifted immediately.

  ‘Good to see you, Alan. It’s been a crazy couple of days for me, too, and I could also do with a chilled beer. Jack, well, he’s having a rough time at home. As I mentioned, he’s asked for four weeks of leave. Jack’s also asked me to do whatever you need done to hold the fort for him with his work.’

  ‘I have had a meeting with the police this morning demanding the company’s security card access logs and copies of security recordings from the cameras in the building and the car park. What’s going on, Jeremy?’

  ‘I wish I knew, Alan. I am as much in the dark as you are.’ Jeremy avoided answering him.

  They stepped out for the twenty-five minute walk to The Mermaid, the last fifteen minutes of it along the edge of the Solent Bay. It was a beautiful autumn day, the sun heating traces of a nippy breeze a couple of degrees. The sea sent a wave towards them a couple of times every minute on their right, only to hit the cement and stone wall of the road that they were walking along and break into a shower of tears with frustration that it could not claim more of the land it wanted at high tide. The salty smell of seaweed and sea brought back instant memories of his evening runs with Maggie along here in happier days. Ahead, the gates to the port opened to the tune of ringing bells, temporarily cutting off their path over the water. The waters rushed in
in a great panic up to the second gate eager to claim some territory that should have been rightfully its, while a boat headed out to enjoy the sunny seas laden with beers and scantily clad women.

  ‘Jack’s been a very naughty boy.’ Alan shook his head in disbelief at the recent events. ‘Everybody thinks that Michelle’s death has something to do with their affair.’

  ‘Really, did things get that obvious at work as well?’ Jeremy probed.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’ Alan shook his head again.

  The gates to the port closed again to the tune of the bells, forming a dam between the sea and the port and fitting the two halves of their path through the waters together again.

  ‘When we made you guys redundant, the orders to reorganize the staff came right from the top. Marine was in secret talks with the American company AirWater Imaging Inc to form a merger, and the staff consolidation had been agreed with AirWater. We say “merger,” but essentially we were voluntarily bought over by friendly AirWater to wade off a hostile takeover bid from a competitor. Anyway, the various engineering groups were merged into two divisions: all of the radio, radar and sonar equipment engineering teams were merged into one Imaging group, and the touch screen, navigation and visualization equipment engineers were merged into the second Navigation group. Both groups were under me and I appointed Jack to head up the Imaging group.’

  They had reached The Mermaid. At the bar Jeremy ordered two pints of lager and an order of nachos to share. As Alan ordered his lunch, Jeremy picked out a seat outside on the deck over the waters of the port where hundreds of boats lay docked within his sight all the way to the bay, their masts and ropes stretched skywards appealing to the sun for good weather that might tempt their owners to take them out to sea. On his right limestone cliffs arose in the distance and peered over the rooftops on tiptoe, looking out to sea.

  ‘Now where was I?’ Alan took his seat at the small round wooden table to Jeremy’s left. ‘Ah, yes, I appointed Jack to head up the Imaging group and Grant to head up the Navigation group. And the first thing our ladies’ man did was to appoint Michelle as his administrative and personal assistant!’

  They both burst out laughing though they were both acutely aware there was nothing funny about the present situation.

  ‘Don’t let anybody in HR hear me talking like this, but I’d be the first to admit that Michelle was a hot piece of ass,’ Alan continued. ‘So I let our man have his perks and turned a blind eye to the whole thing, though in hindsight I should have taken him out for a drink and rapped his knuckles.’

  ‘What happened to Sally in the reorganization?’

  ‘That was my main difficulty about the whole bloody headache, Jeremy. You know that Sally is one of my top engineers. She is a specialist in RF, Sonar, and Radar; putting her in Grant’s group would have been quite unfair. For a couple of months Sally headed one of the sub-teams under Jack. Then Michelle put an appointment system in place for all meetings with Jack and she was the fire-breathing dragon who guarded the schedule. She started denying Sally time for meetings with Jack. Instead of consulting with Sally, she went directly to Aaron, the new guy under Sally who, as you know, is ambitious and forward like Michelle but clueless when it comes to moving any work forward.’

  ‘I was there when the tensions between Michelle and Sally started. Michelle was very manipulative and very disruptive to the team,’ Jeremy concurred.

  ‘It only got worse, Jeremy, and very fast. She was dividing the team into a Sally camp and a Michelle camp. Not many people wanted to support Sally because they liked Jack and did not want to get on his wrong side. Jack had started completely avoiding Sally by then. Besides, Sally is not a politically minded person. She was relying purely on her brains and hard work while Michelle was going around campaigning and pushing the guys’ buttons. Sally was soon getting quite isolated.’

  Alan creased his brow at the memory of the headache he had on his hands. He threw some bread out to a pair of swans on the water, beautiful creatures God had made in the image of His angels for us, his mother used to say.

  ‘When Sally came crying to me I stepped in and pulled a few strings to get her a six month placement at AirWater’s headquarters in San Francisco, all expenses paid. I also gave her four weeks off to travel in the US and South America. I got some advice from a psychotherapist through HR that it takes about six months to heal from a break-up, and I thought that by the time she got back she would be over Jack and things would work out better. I added the extra month on top just to make sure. You know how sally loves travelling.’

  ‘How did Michelle react to that?’

  ‘Actually, to make things smoother, I kept the arrangements just between my counterpart at AirWater, Sally, and myself. No one else knew anything other than that AirWater needed a representative from engineering and that they had selected Sally. It is my job to manage, Jeremy, and I managed the situation.’

  Jeremy nodded in approval of the steps Alan had taken. A pretty waitress in a short skirt had brought over Alan’s lunch and was serving him with lightly flirtatious attention. Alan was a good-looking hunk of a guy, about an inch or two taller than he was and broad, pumped up, and muscular. Alan seemed not to notice the waitress’ attentions or he ignored them, and continued with a curt acknowledgement of her services with a slight nod of his head.

  ‘Michelle ruled as the queen bee for seven months though I did make sure to keep a tight lid on her activities. She was assuming some of Jack’s powers and Jack was letting her. I didn’t like serious engineering matters being handled by someone as unqualified as Michelle who was no more than a glorified secretary with some memorised superficial technical knowledge. I would have preferred her in a sales position rather than amongst my engineers because her people skills were remarkable.’

  Alan ate his lunch quietly for a while, absorbed in thought. The water lapped beneath them under the deck.

  Management was a new thing for Jeremy, now that he had his own company, and there was a lot he could learn from Alan. Well, he wished he could find an engineering project to manage first.

  ‘When Sally returned to her post from the US a little over four months ago the tensions picked up again. About this time the problems with Jack’s family started and if he had been passively isolating Sally before, he had started being nasty and aggressive to her directly by then. There have been more than a few arguments with Michelle shouting at Sally and a few with Jack snapping at her. Then Jack started taking days off work to deal with his family crisis. He wouldn’t elaborate on his problems, but I can make an educated guess that they were related to his affairs?’ Alan probed.

  I should have planned in advance what I should tell Alan and what I shouldn’t. Jeremy picked his words carefully.

  ‘I don’t really know myself what was going on with Jack a few months ago, Alan. I lost contact with him when I moved to London about fourteen months ago until Jack called me last Friday and begged me to come down to his place. I can tell you that his family has found out about the Michelle affair, her pregnancy, and about her death now, although they know nothing much about Sally.’

  Alan acknowledged the information with a nod and took a few more sips from his beer.

  ‘I had a visit from Mr. McAllen, Jack’s father-in-law. As a result, just over two months ago I took Jack and Michelle aside and gave each of them a written warning requiring them to keep their private lives outside the workplace and to behave professionally within the offices, particularly towards Sally. Sally had performed superbly at AirWater and on her return here after her US assignment; AirWater is very impressed with her and my choice of her. My bosses at AirWater have been evaluating breaking up Jack’s group into two separate divisions and having Sally head up one of them, not least because of Jack’s recent lacklustre performance from his preoccupation with his private life. And then I had to leave for San Francisco myself for work at the AirWater Imaging headquarters.’

  Alan paused.

 
; McAllen had indeed been “turning the screws on” Jack (to use Chief Inspector Edwards’ phrasing), from every possible angle.

  ‘About three weeks ago I received word of Michelle’s pregnancy from HR. I advised HR to grant Michelle paid maternity leave early to try and get a handle on the situation, but she declined. Then I got a call from Sally in a state of great distress that Jack and Michelle had fired her in my absence.’

  ‘Was that two Fridays ago?’

  ‘Yes. I had not completed the reorganization and Sally was technically still under Jack, but he needed to have my approval to do that. It was difficult for me to handle the situation effectively from San Francisco. So I asked Sally to remain at home until I got back, only to hear back the next day that she had had a breakdown and had been admitted to hospital! I asked HR to consider Sally’s dismissal to be on appeal to me and not in effect pending my approval and to put her on sick leave with full pay. I put Jack on notice that his actions and Michelle’s actions would be on review in relation to the written warnings I had given them and asked him to prepare his case to defend his actions.’

  Phew! Jack had been under the threat of being fired from both his jobs at AirWater Marine and at McAllen BlackGold. Jeremy knew how precious Jack’s career was to him; it was his life. It was the one thing Jeremy was sure Jack would not sacrifice for anybody else, even for his son with Michelle. Would these pressures have made him re-evaluate his relationship with Michelle? Getting rid of Michelle would have saved at least his position at BlackGold.

  ‘Yes, I heard about her hospitalization. Poor Sally. I’m planning to visit her soon,’ Jeremy said.

  Alan had stopped eating and was sitting up with great concern and agitation.

  ‘And when I heard that Michelle had been murdered last Friday about noon San Francisco time, from HR who had been contacted by the police, AirWater put me back on the next flight home. I had been trying Jack’s numbers for a while when you answered my call on Saturday. What the hell is going on, Jeremy?’